The Rotund Robot (1) – Massive Excitement!

The idea for this project started when all my components and desk finally turned up from China towards the end of last year (2016). I’d had them shipped across several months before when me and the wife moved to America from Beijing. I was excited at being able to get on with pedals again after a break of a couple of months and I ended up having too many ideas floating round my head. Whilst bumbling through the haze of too many ideas and sorting out my desk and rearranging components in a courageous attempt at productive procrastination I heard the regal words “Boss OC2 synth mod” on an episode of the Ruffian Show which I usually have on in the background (it’s a great show about setting up as a pedal maker). I knew this was going to be my next big project.

The first pedal I ever bought when I was 15 or so was a second-hand Boss OC2, followed shortly by a metalzone, and then a rat that someone stole. I loved that OC2 to bits, which is why when I heard the words ‘synth’ and ‘mod’ after it, I think I shed a tear. It was like god whispered in my ear, go forth flabby middle aged man, don’t worry about finding a job, you need to build this. I found this video and knew that this was meant to be. Unfortunately my OC2 has vanished into time, but that’s OK, because Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world’s first bionic man most fun octave synth project.

It was during the search for the schematic for the OC2 that I stumbled upon the Midfi Random Number Generator schematic which led to the Fat Gett.

After scouring through as much information as I could find on the web, I had enough to get started. Here’s where I got my info, and huge thanks to all these people for their great efforts.

Just search for BOSS OC2 or chopped OC2 if you really want to get into the depths of confusion like I did.

I’m really excited about this one. I bought the components in and bought a second breadboard straight away (you can never have enough breadboards right?)

Our first step is to analyse the schematic, and we’ll cover that in the next post. But before we go I’ll explain the name of the project. Ten plus years ago I did a little one off zine called the Rotund Robot. I think it’s also one of my old email addresses. The name has stuck with me for a long time, and now I know why. As I mentioned, this project is the spiritual cousin of the Fat Gett. Rotund = fat, and it’s a synthy sounding thing, so why not robot? ha! it works! kindof! ha! I don’t care, I’m keeping it.